By the way, for this Christmas, we visited my sister's family who lives out-of-state. With my mom who is visiting us from Japan right now, our family traveled from the sunny and warm Southern California to...

...the snowy winter wonderland of the Midwest state! Yes the weather was freeeeezing cold over there and we got stranded at the connecting airport, but we ended up having such good time! You know, our girls are born and raised here in Southern California, so it was their first time to see and feel the *real snow* and to enjoy the winter sports. They had a blast! A huge thanks to my sis's family for entertaining us with so much fun!

How's your holiday sewing getting along? Well, I haven't actually started stitching holiday gifts (yet), but I've been making all things zakka. I just haven't had a chance to post them on my blog lately... You know, it's so quick and easy to post images on Facebook and Instagram nowadays that I had been a bit lazy to update my blog. So sorry!

Today, let me quickly show you some of my recent handmade zakka on this post!

Here's a *macaron* zipper pouch that is made of precious scraps of Libery of London fabric. Can you believe that the entire procedure is hand stitched to make this teeny zipper pouch? A quarter sized coin (Japanese 500 yen coin) snugly fits inside the tiny pocket of the pouch. These macaron zipper pouches are very popular among the Japanese crafters.

Then I made these zipper pouches for our daughter's friends using the Rilakkuma fabrics.

お次はリラックマのファスナーポーチが２点。娘のお友達へのプレゼント用に作りました。

Per request of our girl, I added fluffy pom poms to the zipper pull and used cheery polka dots for the lining. These were given away as birthday gifts with other goodies inside.

ポーチ内布にはパステルカラーの水玉を使い、ファスナー引き手部分にはポンポンを縫い付けてみましたよ。

Rilakkuma lunch set

Here's a bento lunch bag and a matching water bottle holder made for our youngest girl using different Rilakkuma fabric, of course! lol I got this newer version of Rilakkuma fabric from Japan this summer.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend... and enjoyed the black Friday shopping spree! lol Just like you, I have tons of things to do before Christmas... yet I still managed to make these small house ornaments to lift up the holiday spirits.

We don't have a *big* Christmas tree set up in our house yet, but I got this *mini* tree from our local Daiso (Japanese discount store) for less than $2. I guess I need more ornaments to decorate this mini tree, but this is how it looks like for now.